Our knowledge of dinosaurs is gathered almost entirely from fossil evidence, but a few of those fossils are quite special. Some of the most rare are dinosaur skin fossils, of which only three have ever been found. One of those is in the possession of physicist Mauricio Barbi at the University of Regina, and he’s going to use it to determine the real skin color of the hadrosaur duck-billed dinosaur.

The hadrosaur is a herbivore from the Upper Cretaceous Period and lived around 100-65 million years ago. Look at any drawing of the hadrosaur and its skin is depicted as green, brown, or gray, but we don’t actually know what color it was. Now that could change with the help of a synchrotron at the Canadian Light Source research facility.

A synchrotron is used to look at materials at the molecular level so as to determine their structural and chemical properties. It does this using a very bright light produced from electro-magnets and radio frequency waves that accelerate electrons. Infrared, Ultraviolet, and X-rays can all be used to study a particular material in detail.

In the case of this 70 million year old hadrosaur skin sample, the synchrotron will be used to find melanosome structures, which contain the pigment of the dinosaur’s skin. If found, we will be able to state for the first time what the true color of the hadrosaur’s skin was. The synchrotron will also pick up other elements within the skin that should help us better understand what the hadrosaur’s diet consisted of.

The dinosaur skin fossil in Barbi’s possession is incredibly well preserved, but the reason why also remains a mystery. It was discovered near a river bed at the Grande Prairie in Alberta. Barbi hopes that the synchrotron will also help him understand why the sample is preserved so well.